Abstract

MARIN-MONTOYA, Martha Liliana. The Virtuous Circle Project by the City of Pereira, Colombia, as an Initiative for Territorial Transformation. Trilogía. Cienc. Tecnol. Soc. [online]. 2023, vol.15, n.31, e400.  Epub Apr 25, 2024. ISSN 2145-7778.  https://doi.org/10.22430/21457778.2740.

The Virtuous Circle project by the City of Pereira seeks to transform the territory and the socio-economic development of the city by promoting a productive and equitable society based on knowledge production and application. Conceived in 2012 by the Planning Department of Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, this project integrates life cycles with productive cycles. It has three main components (sensory health, psychosocial, and pedagogical) distributed over five links (kindergarten, school, university, networking, and entrepreneurial community) that, connected in a sequence, hold the promise of achieving “the desired society.” Although considered to be only an educational project during its 10 years-its motivation, implementation, and inclusion of multiple and diverse actors from different socio-technical systems show characteristics of a local policy instrument with a systemic vision. Such elements (not very traditional in city initiatives), together with features of this project that change paradigms of territorial development, are in line with what is proposed in the Transformative Innovation Policy Framework. Since this project is a planning tool with limited assessment and impact analysis, the authors employed the instrument called Radar: 7 Principles of Transformative Innovation. The latter indicated that the creation of transformative narratives, the development of formative assessment plans, and the implementation of horizontal governance are essential elements in development initiatives that-like the Virtuous Circle project-aim to transform the territory.

Keywords : Social appropriation of knowledge; systemic change; inclusive innovation; transformative innovation; sustainable transitions.

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